Feltre, 1927 – Rome, 1964

Born in Feltre, Belluno, in 1927, Tancredi Parmeggiani attended art school in Venice and then the Academy of Fine Arts, where he befriended Emilio Vedova in 1946. In 1947 he went to Paris and came into contact with the European avant-gardes of the first half of the century.

In 1951 he participated in an exhibition of Italian abstract art at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. The same year he settled in Venice, where he met Peggy Guggenheim, who offered him a studio in her palace and organised an exhibition for him in 1954. Thanks to his relationship with Guggenheim, he got to know the work of the major American abstract expressionists from Pollock to Tobey.

In 1952, he adhered to Spatialism and, also through gallery owner Carlo Cardazzo, came into contact with Lucio Fontana.

His already strongly gestural painting was given new impetus by a new stay in Paris in 1959, when he had the opportunity to study the works of Jean Dubuffet, Asger Jorn, Karel Appel and on a subsequent trip to Oslo in 1960 those of Munch. His abstract style became increasingly free and informal.

He exhibited several times at the Galleria Il Cavallino in Venice, the Galleria del Naviglio and the Galleria dell’Ariete in Milan – a city he had moved to in 1959 – but also participated in exhibitions in Paris, New York and London. In 1964 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. He died by suicide in Rome on 27 September 1964.